Do you use LabVIEW but not apply for the beta?

[REM1]

Greetings,

Do you make use of some portion of the LabVIEW platform but never sign up for a LabVIEW beta?  Please post here and let me know:

• What portions of the platform do you use? (LabVIEW only, RT, FPGA, DSC, etc.)
• Why do you not apply to be included in a beta?

I'm not promising that anything will change as a result of your answer but...who knows?

[Britoa]

I use LabVIEW at work quite a lot, but I do not do any of the betas.  I don't because while at work, we don't have the time to work with a system that is not release quality (almost doesn't count in this case).  I would consider it for home, but at work, we all use the windows LabVIEW, and all of my machines at home are Linux.

We mostly use LabVIEW with DAQ cards and NI-VISA, and the report generation toolkit here at work.

At home, I would love to try to get the LEGO kit to work in Linux

Message Edited by Britoa on 12-18-2008 06:29 AM

[johnsold]

Robert,

I have been using LV since version 1.2.  All my development work and 99% of end use of my LV programming is on the Mac OS.  Several recent beta programs have not supported the Mac or the hardware I had available.

Over the years I have identified several areas where LV was not as cross-platform compatible as NI claimed (or hoped).  I would recommend that future beta programs be available for all supported platforms to help minimize those effects.

Lynn 

[minnellac]

I'm echoing Lynn somewhat. I've participated in betas in the past, but only at home where I use OS X. I've never participated in testing LV for Windows betas, and that's mostly because I don't usually have time at work to experiment with the software like that (what would I bill those hours to?). Unfortunately, when I've tested the Mac LV most of my windows LV code didn't work (for known reasons like .NET integration or hardware requirements, etc.), so it's hard to really exercise the beta. When I do have time to experiment at work, I mostly try to spend it learning new features or capabilities of the software that I have (recently I was working on a SQLite LV interface--btw, this seems like a no-brainer for integration with a future version of LV).

Chris

[REM1]

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johnsold wrote:

Robert,

I have been using LV since version 1.2.  All my development work and 99% of end use of my LV programming is on the Mac OS.  Several recent beta programs have not supported the Mac or the hardware I had available.

Over the years I have identified several areas where LV was not as cross-platform compatible as NI claimed (or hoped).  I would recommend that future beta programs be available for all supported platforms to help minimize those effects.

Lynn 

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Is this because you are using Power PC machines where the newer versions only support the Intel Macs?

[Ben]

I generally don't do the BETAs since I would be fired (or at least placed on probation) if I attempted to develop an app for a customer using a BETA version and I ran into a show-stopping bug.

I support a large range of applications so you can put a check-mark in every collumn of add-on tool-kits.

Ben

[johnsold]

Robert,

Yes, the PowerPC issue was a big problem for us.  (Announcing the change at the time of 8.6, but continuing support of the PPC until LV 9 would have allowed some time for planning and budgeting.)  Universities tend to keep computers in service 4-6 years, often moving computers to labs when a newer one goes to the office.  I know the labs would be better off with the newer, more powerful computers, but this is the reality in this environment.  Now I am forced to maintain code in several different versions rather than migrating to the newer versions.

 Lynn

[Coq_Rouge]

Labview focus to much on the making things easy for begginners. The advanced user is not so favored.  I guess the target group for beta testing is the advanced user. So putting a lot of effort into beeing a beta tester is not so interesting for the advanced user. The novelty value is to small

[Thoric]

I've used LabVIEW from V5, and also support a large number of applications so I've had a go at most of the toolkits (FPGA, RT, PDA)

At work there's absolutely no opportunity to play around with BETA versions, there's too much risk involved given it's not a verified release. I'd play around with it at home, but I mainly use Linux (SUSE) and to be honest I have better things to do. As much as I love LabVIEW, my kids come first 

[Joe_H]

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Thoric wrote:

I've used LabVIEW from V5, and also support a large number of applications so I've had a go at most of the toolkits (FPGA, RT, PDA)

At work there's absolutely no opportunity to play around with BETA versions, there's too much risk involved given it's not a verified release. I'd play around with it at home, but I mainly use Linux (SUSE) and to be honest I have better things to do. As much as I love LabVIEW, my kids come first 

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Amen to that,

I try to participate in al LabVIEW Betas. But I mostly do it to see if the new version fixed some of the reported bugs that have given grief in the earlier versions. Although I do not have much time to spend on beta testing but I do try.